Rapid Fire
by Crius96
Summary: Sherlock gets handed a wonderful case by his brother - to track down terrorists in Afghanistan. Sherlock finds himself in an unknown world where there's danger at nearly every turn, and some things go very right, and some things go very wrong.
1. Chapter 1

Boredom. Noun. The condition of being bored or uninterested.

Bored. Adjective. Feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's current activity.

Uninterested. Adjective. Not interested in or concerned about something or someone.

Unoccupied. Adjective. Not engaged in work or –

"Sherlock."

I kept my eyes closed for a moment longer, trying to finish reciting definitions, but my place was lost. Damn it all.

"What do you want, Mycroft?" I asked, rolling my head back to look towards the doorway from my position on the couch. There was my annoyingly older brother, appearing upside-down due to the way my head was angled. I felt like snickering childishly at him but somehow refrained.

Mycroft walked in without my invitation, taking a seat in the high-backed chair with the Union Jack pillow. That chair did not have an owner – I certainly never sat in it. Mrs Hudson had left it in here when I had moved in, but that was most certainly _not_ where I was going to be occupying my time.

My brother tapped his umbrella on the floor, directing my focus back onto him. How he knew I had started drifting I was not sure. My eyes had not left him the entire time. "I have a proposition for you."

"No," I answered without pre-empt, turning my head back around and closing my eyes. Mycroft's 'propositions' were the epitome of stupid. They were a waste of my time, and I had a feeling that was the only reason I was assigned them. Too bad for Mycroft that I had stopped listening to him a long time ago.

"Sherlock," Mycroft gave one of his trademark 'stop being such a child' sighs, "would you please listen to me? This one's different. It's an actual case for you."

I raised my eyebrows expectantly, pressing my palms together under my chin. "I'll listen, but I won't make any promises."

There was that sigh again, and more umbrella tapping came along with it.

"We've got wind of a potential terrorist cell in Afghanistan. But we don't have proof, and we can't shoot or bomb anyone without proof that they're actually there."

My lips had already curled up into a smile. "Yes," I said, changing my answer as I rolled over. "_That_ sounds exciting."

"Sherlock, _please_; I haven't finished yet."

I scoffed, waving my hand at my brother as I stood from the couch in a flurry. "I'll need everything you have—files, recordings, a video link to someone stationed out there. A drone would be nice too, if you can –"

"Sherlock." Mycroft stood, grabbing my shoulders and forcing me to a halt. "I need intelligence _on the ground_. You need to go there."

I froze at those words, and Mycroft's hands tightened. For a long moment, I said nothing, staring back into my brother's dark-blue eyes, trying to determine if he was joking or not.

He was not. He was completely serious.

"Are you insane?" I practically yelled, jerking out of his hold. "You want to send me into the middle of a hot zone in the Afghan war? Mycroft, I've no training; I can barely shoot a gun –"

"Oh, bollocks, Sherlock Holmes," Mycroft snapped, interrupting my rant – a rant that I thought was well-placed and well-deserved. It took him a while to compose himself, obviously wound up from multiple sources and events and trying not to take it out on me. "You are exceptional with a weapon of any kind and you know it. And you won't be needing any training, because you're going to be escorted by a hand-picked team of the best infantry soldiers we've got."

I swelled under Mycroft's compliment, though I knew it was really just a statement of fact. I _was_ exceptional with weapons, but I was not about to make this easy on my brother. If I did that, he could very well walk all over me. "I don't work well with people, Mycroft. Your plan is flawed."

There was a small moment where Mycroft just stood there, staring at me as if plotting the best way to kill me. Then he swung his umbrella and turned for the door. "Suit yourself," he called over his shoulder. "I'm sure someone else will gladly take the job. Big money, you know."

I gritted my teeth, frustrated at my brother. I knew he was serious that he would find someone else, even though he knew there was no one better than me. Most people would see this as an impasse, but I knew better. I knew he had won.

"Mycroft!" I crossed to the door in three long strides, finding him looking up at me expectantly from halfway down the stairs. "When do I leave?"

He smiled up at me – or as much of a smile as he could produce, which was just a smirk, really. "Your flight leaves at nine a.m. I'll be here with a friend of mine at five to run through what all is to be expected of you." He turned but paused before he had even dropped another step. "I'm giving you a lot of leniency and making a lot of exceptions for you. Please respect that."

And then he left, using his umbrella as a cane, even though he was years away from needing one.

I backed into my flat, shutting the door slowly. A quick calculation told me, without looking at the clock, that it was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon. Just enough time to make a cuppa, pack my bags, and obtain four hours of sleep, in addition to other various exercises.

I wandered into the kitchen, filling the kettle and turning it on. As the water boiled, I brought out the sugar and took a teabag from the box in the cabinet. Once the tea was in my mug, I meandered into the bedroom – well, it wasn't _the_ bedroom, but it was the downstairs bedroom. I took a sip of my tea before setting it on the chest of drawers and pulling my suitcase from the bottom of my wardrobe.

I packed the case slowly, carefully, every placement precise. Fold the shirts loosely to minimize creases, roll the jackets and trousers to eliminate creases. Shirts stacked by colour in the upper left corner, jackets in the middle, trousers in the upper right corner. Socks and pants – both folded – filled the remainder of the space along the bottom.

Now what? It was seven o'clock, my tea was cold, and I was bored again. Falling asleep was out of the question, obviously. I maintained four hours per night when I was not on a case – I found this to be the minimum my body needed to continue functioning – which meant that going to sleep now would result in waking up before tomorrow even came.

Unacceptable.

So I left the emptiness of my bedroom for the emptiness of the kitchen, where I poured my tea down the sink, and then continued into the emptiness of the living room. Part of me wondered, as I glided over to the right window, if Mycroft, my elder brother of seven years, had handed me this assignment to get me away from London. To get me out of 221B.

How long had it been, anyway? Since childhood, definitely.

Memories I had long ago repressed. Deleted? No. But not for sentiment. For reminders.

Why I am who I am.

Thinking of our home in the country, the large house and yard where two boys played and a mother worried over an absent father, brought a smile unwillingly to my lips. Pleasant picture, just laced with bad thoughts.

An absent father who would remain absent – died in a London alley when I was three. I do not remember; why would I? Mycroft does. He says Father was shot for the twenty pound note he was carrying in his wallet, nothing more.

_Stop_.

Heels in the hallway, making their way slowly up the stairs.

I cocked my head curiously, wondering why my landlady was walking up to see me at this hour.

There was a knock and a soft "yoo-hoo," though by now she ought to know I do not need her casual warning that she was coming. But, I suppose she was too polite to just come right in.

"Can I help you with something, Mrs Hudson?"

She walked into the kitchen, ignoring me and tutting under her breath. I could picture her shaking her head at the mess on the table quite clearly. There was a soft scrape, a clunk, a clatter, and she brushed her hands off. She had been carrying something and had set it down on the table. Hindsight said that was obvious; she always walked pitched to the right when she was balancing something in her hands. Apparently I had not been paying much attention.

"Mrs Hudson?" I asked again, nearly tempted to turn and glance at her, but why, when I could picture her so clearly?

"Just popped in to give you a little something, dear," she said, her voice still carrying from the kitchen, though getting closer now, like her heels. Her walk was not currently pitched to the right.

"Why such a late hour? This is very unlike you, Mrs Hudson." I was smiling, but it could not be heard in my voice. I enjoyed this woman, enjoyed her company. She was, for great lack of better terminology, my substitute mother.

A huff of air; indignant, but teasing. "Well, I had to make sure that snoopy brother of yours was gone, didn't I? Can't have him up here when I'm bringing you treats."

I understood the joke she had just made about Mycroft's failed dieting, and it caused me to finally turn around.

She was in a blouse and long skirt – mistake; I had pictured a dress – though they were purple, so point for me. Her hair was down, straighter now that the day's wears were through with it and it was not showing off to anyone. She looked relaxed and calm, comfortable even in her day clothes.

I gestured her to the chair with the Union Jack pillow, where Mycroft had taken residence not that many hours ago. She sat, and she appeared much more suited for the chair. Though, maybe I should not have been recording data on that hypothesis. I was more than a little biased.

"Would you like some tea?" I offered, and it did not matter to me that I had made some slightly over two hours ago. Even though I, generally, preferred coffee to the typical British drink.

She nodded, smiling up at me kindly. "Milk and sugar," she reminded me – as if I had forgotten. "And grab that tray of pastries while you're out there."

I smirked. She was never afraid to tell me what to do; not intimidated by me. Though, I imagine it would be difficult to cower before someone you had practically raised. I had known Mrs Hudson since I was eight and trying, though rather unsuccessfully, to work the Carl Powers case.

As previously noted, she was practically my mother. All that was missing was the ever-important DNA to prove ownership; _this is mine_. I did not have any of her DNA, but had she still claimed me? Hard to say.

Would require a bit more data.

I turned the kettle on as soon as I was in the kitchen, taking out the teabags, the milk, and the sugar. I set them off to the side while I fished out two plain black mugs. The water boiled in quick order and I stirred in the milk and sugar for my landlady – nothing for me; one mug with sugar was enough for the day.

"Pastries," came a reminding, nagging voice from the living room before I had taken a step.

I smiled, balanced the two mugs in one hand, grabbed the small tray from the table, and returned to the living room.

"That's a good lad."

She smiled at me, and it was hard not to preen at her kind words. I handed her one of the black mugs – the one containing the milkier liquid – and set the tray nearer to her. At an arched eyebrow, I grabbed a brownie with rich icing, but I was not completely fooled, and she knew it.

"So," she began, taking a sip of her tea, the quirk of her eyebrows telling me that I had prepared it perfectly – naturally –, "what did that nosy brother of yours want this time?"

I hesitated, the answer on the tip of my tongue. I took a drink of the hot liquid instead, mulling over how to answer. Most people… I did not bother with the emotions of most people. I did not care if I upset them, made them angry, sad, jealous, happy. I was indifferent to it all. But to Mrs Hudson, to my dearest friend, I cared.

I realised I had been silent for too long.

"A case," I answered quickly, setting my cup down and taking a small nibble of the brownie. "He offered me a case."

She shook her head disapprovingly. "An older brother should be caring for his younger sibling, not throwing him into danger."

_I think he is caring for me_.

She tutted. "What's he got you doing this time? Tracing paperwork? Hunting a traitor to the country? Tracking a bank thief?"

I lowered my eyes for a moment, thinking quickly how best to answer her. Soft, skirting the edges to make it easier on her? Or direct, full force to get it over with and have no lies, no misguided concepts between us before I left?

"Looking into a potential terrorist cell in Afghanistan." I have never much been a man of subtlety.

Mrs Hudson nearly dropped her tea.

I looked up to watch the range of emotions cross her face – shock, fear, disbelief, terror, denial. I wondered, fleetingly, if I had ever – would ever – show such expression on my face. I doubted it.

"Sherlock Holmes…" she sounded a bit breathless. "You're not… you wouldn't…"

Despite her inability at the moment to finish her sentences, I understood her perfectly. I smiled, perhaps a bit sadly, perhaps it had no emotion at all. "I agreed to go. I need to leave," I told her, gesturing around the flat. "I've been here for years, but I need to get out for a while. And the case is marvelous." I grinned.

Incorrect.

_Lie_.

Actually, the case did not sound like much of a deductive challenge. Get in, find the terrorists, capture them, get out. Simple, easy, basic. I was hoping to stumble across some dead bodies on my adventures across the continent, perhaps some fresh ones from an IED. Maybe I could trace an IED. Limitless possibilities.

"But what of your cases here?" Sweet, milky, and sugary. Mrs Hudson's voice was beginning to sound like the tea she was drinking. The voice of a beggar.

I waved a hand at her. "Missing jewels, missing children, unfaithful husbands? Boring. The occasional serial murderer is not enough to get me out of the rut that is boredom."

My landlady sniffled, seeming to admit defeat. "I'll keep the flat for you. Not a soul is going to touch this place until you return."

I lifted my mug back to my lips, nursing it between my palms but not sipping from it. "Kind of you," I whispered. "I'll continue to have money sent to you."

She shook her head forcefully, her eyes narrowed in a glare. "I won't take it."

_Fine, I'll simply have it wired to your account. You never check; you'll never know_.

I smiled, acting defeat. "Alright, Mrs Hudson."

We chatted and sipped our tea for the remainder of the night – her night, so approximately three more hours. I ate my brownie, because it was expected and delicious, and she told me stories of her late sister – stories that I had already heard at least twice, sometimes upwards of three times.

"I should be off, then," she said, setting her empty mug down on the half-empty tray.

I had known she had mostly baked those pastries for herself. After all, I hardly ever ate anything, let alone brownies.

I set down my half-empty mug, folding my hands over my crossed leg. A second of silence and then a soft smile spread across my lips. "I'll be back, Mrs Hudson. You don't have to worry about whether or not I'll return, because I have no intentions of spending the remainder of my days in a desert."

Acrid heat, unruly soldiers, untrusting natives, rocky mountain ranges – not exactly my idea of a pleasant life style, let alone an ideal place to die.

Death.

Death was not exactly something I had ever contemplated. I certainly was not about to start now.

"I know. No, I know that, dear. I'm not worried about that," Mrs Hudson waved her hand at me, pushing herself to her feet. I followed, walking her to the door with my hand on her arm. "Just…" she turned, pulling me down to her level and wrapping her arms around my neck. "You've never been wrong before. Don't be wrong now, not when it counts."

I closed my eyes tightly, gently holding her against me with a hand on her back. I had no _want_ to comfort, no _need_ to comfort, but where this old woman was involved, I made an attempt. I knew I had to comfort her, especially now.

Leaving for a war country was not a big deal to me, but to her, I could only imagine.

Imagine that it was like her sending her son off to war.

"I'm not wrong, Mrs Hudson," I assured her, and she laughed, though the soft sound was a little watery.

She backed away, patting my chest with her fluttering hand. "I know, Sherlock."

She was reassuring herself. Oh, Mrs Hudson.

"Go to sleep, Mrs Hudson. I'll see you when I get back."

She nodded quickly, blinking rapidly to hold back tears. Not quite fast enough – I caught the glint of a single drop of salted liquid sliding down her cheek as she turned away.

I closed the door quietly behind her when her heel clicks told me that she was a third of the way down the stairs, my palm resting against the aged wood before sliding away as I turned into the living room. I cleaned up the evidence of the conversation that had just occurred, washing the mugs and dumping the remainder of the pastries into the garbage bin. I put the assorted science instruments on the table that had been moved back in their original, disorderly organised placement.

With nothing else to be done, no other signs of my last night to remain for Mrs Hudson to see when she inevitably returned to take out what little food there was in the kitchen and to do her weekly dusting, I returned for the last time that evening to the living room.

It was long past dark outside, the artificial light of a London evening filtering in through the two windows against the far wall. I walked over to the left one, peering down at the street below for a handful of seconds. I wondered how long it would take me, out in that forsaken desert, to start daydreaming of this overcast, wet city. Would I ever? Or would I be completely content where I was, solving a case in a land very much unlike the city that was my home.

No point in thinking about it. Either it would happen or it would not.

I knelt down, pulling my violin case closer to me from where I typically kept it propped up against the window. I snapped the silver clasps—never locked because no one else ever touched this case, not even Mycroft—and opened the lid, taking a long moment to gaze at the instrument before I pulled it and the bow out.

Setting the shoulder rest firmly in place on the crook of my shoulder and neck, I lifted the bow to the strings. I had to pause a moment before a song came to mind, which was odd. I knew nearly all classical songs ever written, had them all stored away in a special room that was easily accessible and extremely organised. But each song that I thought of, I instantly discarded. Too sentimental. Too old. Too new. Too rapid. Too soft. None of them were right.

So I started composing.

Notes came and left my mind faster than I could keep up, and I had to focus to draw them back in order to keep up a steady rhythm. I did not bother writing them down – not this time, when I was only playing to waste time, only playing to keep myself from falling asleep.

But sleep was inevitable, and eventually midnight neared. I lowered my bow and replaced it tenderly in its case, setting it up against the wall in its usual place. I was not tired at all, but the seven and a half hour flight that was looming over me beckoned me to my bed, where I fell asleep after stripping down and pulling on pyjamas.

The buzz on the downstairs door came exactly when I was expecting it to – five minutes before five in the morning, not a second before and not a second after. Mycroft was bizarrely punctual like that.

I trotted down the stairs, buttoning my suit jacket before I reached the hallway and pulling open the door before my brother could knock again. "Good morning, Mycroft," I greeted, nodding briskly over his shoulder at the obviously military man – Major – dressed in civilian clothing who was standing just behind him. "Please," I stepped back, opening the door wider and gesturing inside, "come in."

Mycroft stepped up, lifting his eyebrow in an intrigued manner at me as he passed and mounted the stairs. The balding Major nodded stiffly at me and followed Mycroft up the stairs, holding a rather large duffel bag in his right hand. I narrowed my eyes on it as I swung the door shut behind me, but I could no more see through the material of the bag than I could read minds.

I climbed the stairs two at a time, reaching my flat only a step behind Mycroft's military acquaintance – he had said friend, but Mycroft, like myself, did not have friends.

"Sherlock," my brother turned to me from near the fireplace, a small smile fixed on his face, "this is Major Barrymore. He's agreed to do me a favour on a Saturday morning and debrief you here in London so that you can get to work as soon as your plane lands in Kabul."

My slow blink was my only acknowledgement to Mycroft before I turned to Barrymore, who narrowed his eyes slightly on me. "I'm going to assume you've already packed."

"Obviously."

"No good." He shook his head, gesturing to the desert camouflage duffel bag. "I brought the clothes that you're going to be wearing. Go ahead and take a look if you want."

Feeling like I was walking into either a trap or a joke and not liking either of those options, I stepped forward and pulled at the zipper on the bag.

Inside were sand-coloured t-shirts, cargo trousers of a slightly darker shade, a desert camouflage outfit complete with Osprey body armour, and a pair of combat boots. Five changes of clothes, six if you counted the camouflage, which you really could not, because those would typically be worn over the other clothes. I narrowed my eyes at the bag but said nothing. If this was standard, then I would deal with it.

Noticing that there were more than clothes in the bag, I reached inside and started pulling things out.

"Ah, yes, your personal weapon," Major Barrymore sounded a little pleased, though whether it was about the weapon or about the fact that I had not complained, I was not sure.

I did not care.

"Can you use that?" he asked of the SIG Sauer L106A1 in my hand.

I rolled my eyes. What kind of an idiot did this man take me to be?

With unpracticed ease, I slid out the clip, unloaded a bullet, reloaded it, slid the clip back into place, cocked a bullet into the chamber, turned the safety off, and aimed the gun at the wall, my finger pressed flat against the trigger guard.

"I could take it apart as well, if you wanted me to," I offered, setting about taking the bullet from the chamber and putting it back into the clip, "but I think that's a fair example." I made a show of turning the safety back on before sliding the gun back into the holster I had found it in.

"Point made, Mr Holmes," Barrymore said, folding his arms across his chest. "You're also going to have grenades on you when you get over there, as well as your own Personal Role Radio. I doubt that they'll have you carrying any of the larger weapons.

"The vehicle you're going to be traveling in is a Vector, which is a newer, modified version of the Pinzgauer. This model is a hardtop, so any small caliber weapons won't be able to pierce through it. These vehicles are mostly used on patrols, so riding in one shouldn't raise any suspicion.

"You've been assigned to work with the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. I, personally, haven't met any of them, but as a team, they're very well-known and distinguished."

"Which of them will I be working with?" I asked, having made the deduction this morning while awaiting Mycroft that this would be the infantry team that I would be assigned to.

I knew that infantry teams were made up of eight members, and, when assigned to missions, those eights members were split into two teams of four. I naturally knew everything about every member of the Fusiliers, and there was really only one I did not want to get stuck with. He was a rookie, only in the desert for a few months. A replacement for an expert bomb-tech who had got himself shot while trying to defuse a bomb that ended up exploding anyway.

Three people dead.

Four wounded.

"You've been granted a lot of special treatment, Mr Holmes." Major Barrymore was speaking again. "You're going to have a five-man escort, and I'm sure you're aware of how unusual that is."

I nodded.

"Sergeant Donovan, Warrant Officer Lestrade, Lance Corporal Anderson, Staff Sergeant Dimmock, and Captain Watson have all agreed to accompany you into the mountains."

I had to fight back my sneer – I would not have, except that neither Barrymore nor Mycroft knew that I had already researched the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Lance Corporal Anderson was the officer I had been hoping to avoid. He was an obvious idiot from every report I had read on him. He was going to get us killed or blow the mission.

Or both.

Unfortunately, this was a volunteer mission, and infantry members were a fairly tight-knit breed.

I was stuck with him.

"What, exactly, is it that I'm supposed to be doing while I'm in and around the capital city of Afghanistan, Major Barrymore?" I asked, leaning back against the high-backed chair.

Behind me, Mycroft made a noise in the back of his throat that caused me to turn to him.

"We can't tell you everything, of course," he said, swinging his umbrella a few centimetres off of the floor.

_Oh, no, naturally not. Send me out there blind, how about._

Secretly, though, I was glad. Glad that I had to figure it out for myself.

"But," Mycroft continued, "I can tell you that, from what we've heard, they're in the mountains to the northeast of Kabul. There are two possible locations for them to be set up. The first is twenty-five kilometres west along the Kabul-Nangarhar Highway and then fifteen and a half kilometres north along the edge of the mountains."

Mycroft sighed slightly, tapping his umbrella on the floor. "If they are not there, then the only other place that we know of them to be is an additional thirty-two kilometres straight west of that spot through the mountains on a narrow dirt road."

"Sounds intriguing," I said. "Now get out of my flat so that I may enjoy my last moments of solitude."

Mycroft gifted me with his 'why do I waste my time on you' sigh and gestured the Major out of the door. "Oh, and Sherlock," he said, stopping on the landing, his back to the doorway, "you're taking a private jet so that you don't have to go through any checks for that weapon that you're now carrying. Anthea is accompanying you. Be kind to her, please."

Heavy footsteps – step, step, step, pause, pause, handle, hinges, slam, _silence_.

Anthea.

How dull.


	2. Chapter 2

My flight landed at Kabul International Airport at eight seventeen that evening, twelve minutes past schedule. There had been a delay at Heathrow, to my severe agitation and Anthea's complete ignorance.

After the longest twelve minutes of my life, Mycroft's private jet had finally taken off into the air.

Each passing hour of my trip had given me new reason to hate flying. No one would talk to me after the first three minutes of mandatory instruction were completed. Anthea remained with her nose in her BlackBerry the entire time – take-off and landing included – which was fine, because I had no desire to speak with her.

I had wondered, briefly, if Mycroft had warned the young flight attendant on board of my deductive skills, and if that was the reason she seemed to be so nervous during the preflight briefing. The thought was quickly dismissed, however. One detailed sweep of my eyes had told me everything – nearly everything – that I needed to know or would ever want to know about her.

One cat and a large dog – a German Sheppard, most likely. Suffered from anxiety attacks as a pre-teen and still thinks that she could break into one at any moment. Trying to stop a bad nail chewing habit. Really quite young – twenty-six – but already a mother of one and wanting another. High sex drive and having an affair – with the pilot of this plane, it would seem. I did not know her name, though, because she did not ever wear her name tag – obvious in the lack of pinholes on her uniform.

The short thrill of that deduction had lasted all of five seconds. The boredom of the rest of the flight had been spent trying to come up with ways to survive if the plane were to crash at every moment we hit turbulence. Conclusions: irrelevant – at this altitude, at this speed, we would all die.

Still, the thoughts were preoccupying.

Now I did not have to worry about that, though. Now the plane was on the ground, and I was walking down the ladder with the duffel bag at my side towards the tarmac below me.

Anthea had not offered any words, and neither had I.

As soon as I reached the ground – my legs a little unsteady from the long flight – I caught sight of a man walking towards me. I was the only one here, and Mycroft's jet was the only plane on the tarmac, so I walked forward, meeting him halfway.

He was shorter than I was, a good six inches at least. Sandy-blond hair that was starting to grey was cut into a military style, though not as short as most infantry cuts. His blue eyes were aged far beyond his years – lifetimes old – but they were intriguing, not disturbing. He was not dressed in camouflage, just in boots, cargo trousers, and a tucked-in form fitting white t-shirt. His tags were just barely visible under the fabric.

Army doctor. Obvious.

"Captain John Watson," he said, holding out his hand – his right hand, but there had been a moment of hesitancy on his left hand.

I shifted my hold on the duffel bag and shook his hand. "Sherlock Holmes. Where's the rest of your team?"

"Sitting anxiously at a temporary base on the northeast edge of town, waiting for us to show up," John answered, turning around and leading the way from the refueling jet that was bound for an instant turnaround back to London.

The heat of the desert – heat that I had overlooked in my excitement while I had been packing – was a dull throb, fading out with the sinking sun. The black asphalt was still rolling off waves of heat, however, and I was soon overly warm in my suit.

Captain Watson glanced back at me, as if reading my thoughts. "You have something else to wear, right? Something practical?"

I sighed insufferably, knowing that now I owed Mycroft another favour for the clothes. "Yes," I replied, gesturing at the duffel bag in my hand.

"Good. You should probably change before we leave the airport. Do you have a weapon?"

I nodded in affirmation.

"You should holster that as well. I'm not saying that you're going to need it – it's a short ride from here to where we're set up for the night – but better safe than sorry."

"Do you really believe that, Captain Watson?" I asked, somehow doubting that the soldier before me had climbed ranks by being the man in the back of the team, never taking risks, always being prepared.

He paused at the door leading into a side section of the airport, his hand hesitating on the silver bar handle. Turning to me, he looked calm, but I could sense that I was treading dangerous waters.

Interesting.

"It's just John, please," he spoke at length, pulling open the door and gesturing me inside. "And it's my job to keep my team safe, Mr Holmes; of course, I believe it."

I walked past him towards where the only logical place to house a toilet would be. I stepped inside the small room, and John did not follow me.

I pictured him standing just outside of the door, hands behind his back, legs slightly spread in what most people would definitely take as an intimidating stance. Especially given the Browning L9A1 strapped to his right thigh and the definition of muscles a man only gets from working long, hard hours.

I shook my head to clear it of the unneeded and non-useful image, setting the bag down on the counter by the sinks. Tugging the zipper open, I pulled out a change of clothes and the tan boots with the thick soles. I stripped quickly, rolling up my suit and tucking it into the very bottom of the duffel bag.

I pulled the cargo trousers on first and was unsurprised to find that they were a perfect fit. There really was not much about me that Mycroft did not know, and though that bothered me to no end, I was finding it rather convenient as of late. The shirt came next, quickly followed by the boots, which I tucked the legs of the cargo trousers into before lacing them tightly to the top.

The weapon I was a little more hesitant towards. I had been given the luxury of a convertible holster – pull off the straps of one, insert the straps for the other, and, voilà, two holsters – and I was not sure which one I should use. Shoulder holsters were more comfortable, certainly, but, requiring a cross-draw, took longer to get the gun from.

For some reason unknown to me, I had an innate urge to impress the army doctor standing outside of the bathroom door. Stupid, illogical, but true. He had not hated me at first glance, and I was clinging to that. So I buckled the SIG Sauer L106A1 to my thigh, threading the strap through my belt to hold it up. After zipping closed the duffel bag, I returned to the small, mostly private terminal.

John was not standing exactly like I had pictured. His shoulder – left shoulder – was leaning against the wall, his left ankle crossed over his right. To anyone passing by, he looked casual, like he was waiting for a friend, possibly watching for said friend in the small crowd, but I saw through it.

His right hand was open for shooting, something he could easily do from this position. Granted, he only had one foot planted, but he had a wall for additional support. His holster was even unclipped. And he was not scanning for friends, he was scanning for threats.

"Ready," I said, and John turned, obviously having heard the door open when I had exited the bathroom.

He ran his eyes over me slowly, his gaze pausing on the holster at my hip. "Have you ever carried a gun before?" he questioned, leading the way to a set of doors on the other side of the small wing of the rather large airport.

I quickly matched pace with him, adjusting my stride to make up for the additional weight of the holster on my right thigh. The strap pulled at my belt, which tugged my hips a bit out of line, and I had to adjust for that as well. Annoying.

"Not in a thigh holster. Well, I've worn one, for scientific purposes, but it's illegal to carry in London."

John raised his eyebrows without turning to look at me, pushing through the set of double-glazed doors that led outside, where it was already ten degrees cooler than it had been when we had entered the building. "Yet you've carried a pistol and presumably shot one before?"

I thought I detected a smirk in his tone, but I was not sure, and I was not going to glance over and check. "Of course I have. I'm a consulting detective; do you really think I would have lasted this long if I didn't know how to use a weapon?"

John did not answer me, and he did not say anything else as we made our way to a Land Rover parked against the pavement a slight ways to the west of the doors. Annoyingly, though, I guess, fairly, he opened the driver's door and jumped inside.

With a small roll of my eyes, I tossed my duffel bag into the backseat and pulled myself up beside the blond Captain.

I watched out of the corner of my eye as he put the key in the ignition, turning it with skilled fingers that could just as easily end a life as save one. I made a mental note to never underestimate this man on anything.

"Liar," I said, continuing a conversation that we had already had, and that had theoretically ended back at the airport.

We were outside of the airport grounds by now, just turning onto the road that would eventually deposit us onto the highway. John was an expert driver, precise as I was learning he was with everything, and he had not felt the need to fill the silence that had surrounded us, a quality that I found exceptionally rare and very much to my liking.

My own mind was loud enough without being filled with the thoughts of others.

John angled slightly towards me, his eyebrows knitted together. "Sorry, what?"

I tilted my head minutely to the side, trying to detect what that variation in his voice was.

Oh. He thought I was talking to myself.

_You have a lot to learn about me, Captain John Watson._

"'_Better safe than sorry_,'" I replied, quoting him from earlier. "You said you believed it, and I'm calling you a liar."

A muscle jumped in John's jaw, his biceps tightened, but his hands did not clench on the steering wheel as he turned onto the Kabul-Nangarhar Highway, the one we would be travelling in the morning as a team tracking down terrorists.

He was very good at hiding his anger.

"And what makes you say that, Mr Holmes?" he enquired, his voice perfectly normal, if not a little interested in what I would say.

"Sherlock," I corrected automatically, realising that I had forgotten to mention it when we were at the airport. "Mr Holmes is my brother."

I turned away from John, watching the light seep away from the city around me. We were heading away from the central hub, into the more desolate, run-down section of the city, and it showed in the passing structures of the buildings. Kabul was so vastly different from London, but there was one thing that every city shared in common with all of the others – there was always a poor sector, and always a homeless sector.

"I observed you," I spoke before too long had passed. "I know that you're left handed, but you're a much better shot with your right. I know that you studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and that you've been enlisted for the last nine years and have refused to go home under any circumstance, which tells me that you lack a strong connection with your family but have a strong sense of duty to everyone here. On the topic of your family, I know that you haven't spoken to them in well over a year and that you're angry at your brother. I know that you were shot in your left shoulder last year and that you've only recently been given a full bill of health. You received that wound protecting your team while your bomb specialist tried to diffuse a car bomb, an effort that inevitably failed. And I know that, while you may care enormously about your team members and their safety, you have a blatant disregard for your own."

John exited the highway, coasting down an exit ramp that angled off to a small road heading north. He pulled over just past the exit, easing the vehicle into park and turning to face me.

"How could you _possibly_ know any of that?"

My eyes quickly roamed over his face, trying to gauge his reaction, to see if there was any potential for anger or annoyance hidden somewhere amongst the lines of his features. For some reason, I very much wanted John Watson to _not_ hate me. But all I saw was open shock and awe, two expressions that I had not been gifted with in a very long time.

"When you first offered to shake my hand, you instinctively began raising your left arm first, because that's your strong hand, but you settled on your right hand because you know that most people are right handed." I turned toward him, gesturing at the pockets of his cargo trousers. "Also, you keep everything that you would need to use in a hurry on your left side. But," I pointed at the holster on his thigh, "your gun is on your right, so I'm assuming that you were trained by a right handed – oh, no, never mind," I corrected myself, staring intently at his eyes. "Your right eye is dominant, so you had to adapt to shooting right handed in order to be a better shot. Well done."

John looked a little numb, but he had not interrupted yet and he did not look lost, so obviously I was getting somewhere.

"The fact that you're a Captain and your age told me that you've been enlisted for a while, but no more than ten years. Nine was really just a shot in the dark – good one, though. Nine years in the army puts you in your upper thirties, and I would assume exactly thirty-nine, judging by what I'm sure your relationship with your family is like. Given your age, and subtracting out time in the military and time spent in your later years in uni, that narrows down significantly the number of hospitals in London willing to allow students to use their labs for training. Bart's seemed like the most obvious fit, and I was right."

I wondered, for a moment, if I should stop while I was ahead. These were quite personal things I was acknowledging about John, a man I did not really know – though obviously I knew him well enough.

John swallowed. "What else?" He sounded rather energised, slightly alive. As if my deductions about him had awoken something inside of him that he had not known was there.

Fascinating.

"You wear a watch on your left wrist that's obviously special to you, going by how clean it is. The scratches on the face weren't made by you, even though you're in a warzone. So, it's had a previous owner. Watches are good gifts from one man to another, typically from father to son. Those watches, however, are, more often than not, hand-me-downs, and this is a fairly modern edition. Sticking with close family, that leaves a brother. You're angry at him, which is fairly evident from the way you never glance at the watch for the time; you read it in the angle of the shadows cast by the sun – I noticed that when we were leaving the airport. But you don't hate him, because you still wear the watch and take care of it even though he isn't around to see."

John's posture had shifted slightly, his eyes narrowed in thought as he watched me. Not guarded, though, which I took as a positive sign to keep going.

"When I knew I was going to be assigned to your team, I looked up your mission history – success rates, members that have come and gone through the years; basic statistics. I saw that there was an explosion with your old bomb technician, that four people had been injured during the blast.

"When you stopped in front of me on the tarmac, you were at attention, but when we walked out of the building, you had let your guard down a little. Due to muscle damage, your left shoulder droops lower than your right when you're not thinking about it, and you turn that side of your body away from people subconsciously, trying to hide the wound that no one can see anyway.

"And all of that, added up together, gives me your profile. And from your profile I can conclude that you have no issues running straight at enemy fire with only a handgun, especially if it meant making sure that the rest of your team got home safe."

I flicked my gaze between John's eyes, noticing the slight dilation of his pupils. His pulse was slightly elevated as well, but not alarmingly – just barely noticeable. I would not have noticed at all if I had not taken his pulse visually before I had started talking. "And so there, you see? You're a liar."

John ducked his head down, rubbing his hand over his mouth and staring at his watch as if it alone had divested all of this information to me. A ridiculous notion, to say the least. "That… was amazing," he said after a while, lifting his head to grin up at me. "That was bloody amazing."

"That's not what people normally say," I said before I could stop myself.

John cocked his head to the side. "And what do people normally say?"

I took a slow inhale, trying to remember why I had quit smoking when I so desperately wanted one right now. "'Piss off.'" The corner of my mouth twitched up into a smile, a true one that made the corners of my eyes crinkle.

John turned away, laughing as he threw the Land Rover into gear. "I can imagine. But still, that was… well, I don't really have words. And this is what you do for a living?"

I shrugged, leaning forward so that my forearms rested on the dashboard. "More or less. I usually deduce things about dead people, though. Or missing people. You know, because neither are there to tell us the facts themselves."

John shook his head, obviously still in awe, as he drove down the dark road, taking turns into alleys that did not look like they were wide enough to fit the Land Rover.

"So tell me," I asked, turning to face John, whose face was illuminated by the lights from the dashboard, casting dark shadows under his cheekbones and eyes, enhancing his brow and jaw line, "did I get anything wrong?"

I always got something wrong. It was inevitable to get at least one detail misplaced, mixed up, or forgotten.

"My watch has had a previous owner, and you're correct in saying that it wasn't my father. It was originally a gift from Clara to Harry, but Harry gave it to me when they broke off the engagement. Or, rather, Harry broke it off."

My eyebrows knitted together in my confusion. "So what, exactly, did I get wrong?"

"Harry is short for Harriet." John smirked at me. "Thought you were supposed to be some big time detective."

"Sister," I groaned at my mistake, dropping my forehead onto my folded hands. "_Sister_."

"As for my shoulder," he started, and I lifted my head quickly, afraid I had said two things wrong. John laughed. "Calm down, you got that right, I just figured I would fill in what you didn't say."

Honesty. He was being honest and forthcoming to me. Why?

_Why me? I don't deserve it, John, believe me._

I sat up, leaning back against the seat and steepling my fingers under my chin. "Enlighten me, please."

"Well," he turned the vehicle down another narrow alley, guiding it onto a wider road on the other side, "it was intended to be a kill shot. Entrance in the front, exit in the back. Large caliber. Shattered my clavicle and grazed the subclavian artery. My other team members were distracted by the sudden burst of enemy fire, and I would have died if my nurse hadn't been only a few feet behind me. He dragged me behind our vehicle and kept pressure on the wound until… well, until the bomb went off. The gunfire ended there and we were able to get back."

Not knowing what exactly I was supposed to say to that – I never tended to trouble with emotional replies or condolences – I said nothing at all, staring out through the windshield at the approaching buildings.

"Why are we staying out here?" I finally asked, glancing sideways to follow the shape of an old man fall out of sight behind a building.

"Around six months ago, another infantry team was patrolling through this part of the city. They found this house standing empty, the houses in its immediate vicinity occupied by only the old or the sick. They asked around about why the house was abandoned, and the consistent reply obtained was that it was cursed, and no one would elaborate. So, they claimed it as British Army property, and it's just been sitting there until this morning when we moved in for the night."

"Cursed?" I asked, my voice light with a hint of laughter. It was a tone I had not heard my vocal chords produce in a long time.

John rolled his eyes, turning down a wider alley off of the road. "Like I said, no one would elaborate. I'm assuming someone died in the house."

I made a disbelieving noise, gazing out of the side window. "Sound logic, but I doubt that that's the reason."

"Well then, what do you –"

"Captain?" a disembodied voice scratched around the interior of the vehicle, cutting off John's question. "Watson, is that you driving down our road?"

John reached onto the floor between his seat and mine, shuffling around with his hand, presumably in search of the voice. I glanced at the floor and found a long range walkie-talkie, picking it up and pushing it into John's palm.

"Yeah, Dimmock, it's me. I've got Mr Holmes with me. Everything went fine on my end. How's it been for you guys?"

There was a moment's pause before the voice – belonging to someone named Dimmock, a man by the sound of his voice – came back through the line to reply. "Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Natives want us to leave, Lestrade won't stop bossing us around and fussing like a mother hen. Donovan's been trying to teach that rookie, Anderson, how to break apart electrical wires and rewire them. I have to tell you, Captain. I'm glad he isn't a bomb tech. He'd be a dead one."

John's wide smile dropped at that last comment, and he took a moment to respond. "Alright, Dimmock. Watch our backs as we're coming in. And don't shoot us, please."

With a sigh, John dropped the walkie on the floor again, refocusing on the empty road. "He's a good soldier. He just likes to talk about everyone else. Can't get that kid to shut up for anything," he huffed, readjusting his position on his seat.

Another two hundred metres of driving and John pulled over for the second time, but this time he turned the Land Rover off. With the last growl of the engine went the lights, and we were cast into near total darkness.

I closed my eyes, letting them adjust to the pitch behind my eyelids, and when I opened them, I could at least see shadows. John was looking over at me, though I could not see his expression, which I found ultimately irritating.

"Nice to not be dealing with an idiot for a change," was all he said before he opened his door and jumped down, his boots hitting the ground with a soft thud.

I blinked slowly and mimicked the motion, closing the door as quietly as possible and opening up the rear door to grab my duffel bag.

John was waiting for me on the other side of the Land Rover. He nodded wordlessly across the street at a one-storey home without windows. As we approached, John lifted his hand in a wave towards the roofline, and, following his gaze, I noticed the silhouette of a sitting man holding a gun. Dimmock, I presumed.

"Ready to meet the kids?" John asked quietly, his hand poised on the doorknob. His white shirt was very visible in the dark, enhancing the width of his shoulders and the tone of his torso. His position looked cocky and careless, and it was easy for me to imagine him in his mid-twenties, going through basic training until he finished school as a doctor.

I arched an eyebrow down at him, though I doubted he could see me in the lacking light. "Should I be afraid?"

John chuckled, turning the knob. "They're a bit like teenagers, the lot of them, but they're all house-trained, at least," he joked, pushing the door open. "It's just us, guys," he called past the threshold before he took a step inside, gesturing me in behind him.

There was a scrape that sounded like a chair against a stone floor and shuffled footsteps from deeper in the house as I closed the door behind myself. Three people – two men and a woman, all wearing clothes similar to mine – pushed into the room via a doorway off to our left. I realised, taking in the gas lanterns that each of them carried, why I had thought the house had no windows – a false initial assumption.

It was not that it was lacking windows, it was that they were boarded up and there were no lights on inside.

"He's a bit scrawny. Not much muscle on him. How's he going to handle a gun?"

I turned my attention to the woman, her dark, naturally curly hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her shirt was tucked in to her cargo trousers, boots laced tightly all the way up to the top. Professional.

I was about to reach for my gun to show her exactly how well I could use it – using the same demonstration I had given Major Barrymore – but John spoke up before I had the chance.

"Donovan, please." His tone was chiding, but he sounded tired, like he was constantly telling her off. "I assure you, he can handle a weapon, and he can stand on his own."

She narrowed her eyes on me in doubt, the rich light cast by the lanterns making her look more menacing than I assumed she was. Still, I made a mental reminder to keep an eye on her.

"Lestrade, would you please give him what he needs for tomorrow?" John asked. "Make sure he's got all of his rations, double-check that his PRR is working properly, everything on the checklist."

I had a flash of disappointment that John was not going to be showing me everything, but I quickly cast that thought aside as irrational. Why should it matter to me who tells me what's going in my pack and what I have to carry in my bulletproof vest? Whether John helped me tune my Personal Role Radio or whether Lestrade did should have made no difference to me.

So why did it?

The man standing on the far left of the group nodded, his grey hair flashing silver for a moment in the low light. I narrowed my eyes in thought, finding it interesting that he was older than John, yet ranked below him. Would definitely require more facts and background on why that was.

"Good, thanks." John sounded winded, exhausted. Running on fumes for too long, trying to prepare his team for this mission and all of the others they had been on. Trying to keep them all safe so that they could return home to their families. "I'm going to grab a bite and then kip for a while. How long has Dimmock been up there?" he asked, gesturing above us to the ceiling as he started walking towards a doorway in the far right corner of the room.

"Couple hours," Donovan answered, shifting her weight around so that she was always focused on John, always watching her leader. Point for her – her manners might leave something to be desired, but she was loyal and protective.

John nodded briskly before stepping into the darkness of the room beyond this one, out of my line of sight. I felt the innate urge – need – to follow after him.

"Anderson, go relieve him," John instructed, his voice carrying through the walls. "And if you complain, so help me, I'll make you take first watch every night for the duration of this mission."

I hid my grin as Anderson pushed past me and out of the door.

"Come on, Mr Holmes," Lestrade called my attention to him, waving me back into the room they had walked out of. "Allow me to give you a rundown of everything."

"Just Sherlock, please," I told him, following as he walked through the doorway.

The room beyond, lit only by the minimal light from Lestrade's lantern and then Donovan's when she entered behind me a few moments later, was thinly furnished. Five cots were pushed up against the walls, spread out as a defense against attack – no more than two people could be shot from any entrance to the room, allowing a chance for the others to wake up and fight back. Beside each cot, except two, lay a semi-automatic assault rifle – two L85A2's and one L129A1 DMR – a rucksack, and Osprey Body Armour.

"Don't worry," Lestrade spoke, gesturing me towards a cot along the far wall – strategically the least likely to get shot – that had no gun or vest lying beside it, "you're not sleeping on the floor."

"So I assumed, what with there being six of us, one on watch, and five cots. I'm also assuming regular rotations, either two or three hours, judging by the need for Anderson to head up there now, so a constant need for only five cots would be necessary."

_I'm not an idiot, though obviously you are, if you really thought I would have missed that_, I thought at Lestrade's slightly impressed expression as he took a seat on a cot, pulling out a small bag from underneath it.

"Told you," John appeared through another doorway, a can of baked beans and a bun in his hands, "he can handle himself."

"Why? Because he figured out basic math and logic?" Donovan countered, sitting down on a cot across the room.

"Donovan –"

"Captain," I cut John off, my eyes cutting to his for a moment, "it's fine."

John stared at me for a moment longer before lowering himself onto a cot directly across from the first doorway – strategically the most likely to get shot.

I smirked. "It's not Miss Donovan's fault that her father abandoned her when she was…" I tilted my head at her, "six, wasn't it?"

Her jaw clenched.

Lestrade stared at me as I took a seat on the cot I had been gestured towards. He handed me off the bag he was holding while Donovan seemed to be trying to come up with words.

She reeled on John. "Why did you tell him about me? What else did you tell him?"

I jerked my head up, glaring at her from across the room. She was accusing _John_, really? Did she really know John so little as to assume that he would tell a complete stranger his team's personal secrets?

Idiot. Complete idiot.

John looked taken aback, obviously as shocked as I was that she would immediately jump to those conclusions. "Sally, I didn't –"

"That is my _life_, Captain," she sneered, and it took an astonishing amount of willpower for me to not jump up and physically take her down a level.

I blinked.

_Since when am I physical? _

_I'm not._

At least I did not think so.

"Sergeant Donovan," I called, loud enough and direct enough to pull her attention at me. "Captain Watson told me nothing about you. _You_, however told me everything I needed to know."

She snarled at me, taking a challenging step forward. "Bullshit."

John made a move to stand up, but I beat him to it, holding my hand out at him in a 'wait' sign. Surprisingly, he listened.

"When you entered the room, you did so only a step in front of Lestrade. You always kept one foot firmly planted near him, even when you turned your body to follow John when he walked away. You're loyal, you're professional, but obviously," I made a gesture at John in reference to the accusations she had just made, "you don't really trust them."

She stared at me, fighting down the anger that had suddenly burst from her. I could see her fury, pent up from years in boot camp and trying to prove herself to overbearing men, swirling on the other side of her dark eyes.

"Now, I can't order you what to do, because I have technically no authority over you," I said after giving her a moment to compose herself, "but I suggest you back off and sit down."

The tension rolling off of her was nearly palpable, but she finally turned towards John, apologised, and walked briskly from the room.

"Whoa, hey, where are you going?" A middle-aged man had just walked into the room, and he held up his hands as Donovan shoved past him. "Where's she going?" he asked to the rest of us, walking over to the unoccupied cot and taking a seat, setting his L85A2 on the floor slightly underneath it.

"Leave it be, Dimmock," John advised with a sigh, taking a bite of his beans. His eyes were on me, however, trying to communicate something that he was not actually allowing me to read. Afraid of the others seeing? Possibly. More likely that he was afraid of me seeing something that he did not want me to see.

I had to applaud his ability to hide his emotions.

I retook my seat on the cot, opening up the bag that Lestrade had given me.

"So," the Warrant Officer said, pointing at the bag, "why don't you tell me what everything is and how to use it and I'll tell you if you're wrong."


	3. Chapter 3

"Rise and shine, lady and gentlemen."

I parted my eyelids at John's partially muffled yet alert voice, though I had not had a second of sleep last night. I sat up slowly, swinging my legs over the side of the cot. My eyes swept the room before I had even fully straightened, taking in the sight of the soldiers as they came into their conscious minds.

Lestrade was not in the room, which I had already known. I had kept a clear count of who was posted on watch and how long everyone was up on the roof with their automatic rifle as their only company. Donovan had been the third to go, after Anderson had climbed down – rather loudly – to wake her up. Then it was John, and lastly Lestrade. Each time, the person on watch came down to wake up the next person, and each time I cringed at the lack of sense they executed by leaving the house unprotected for a valuable count of seconds.

The tantalising aroma of coffee pulled me completely off of the cot and into the next room. I followed the smell until it deposited me into an abandoned kitchen, empty except for John. He looked a little ragged, still in need of a shave yet this morning. His hair was a ruffled mess, sticking up at all ends. But when he turned to me, his eyes were alert and there was a gentle smile on his face.

He handed me a cup with dark liquid, steam swirling from the top. He made an apologetic face, shrugging his shoulders as he lifted his own mug and took a sip. "It's not the greatest. It's actually a bit like drinking coffee with three shots of rum in it, but it's a hell of a good way to get your blood flowing and wake you up on an early morning."

"Can't be that bad." I took a sip and sputtered, nearly spitting it out.

John laughed, setting his mug down so that he would not spill on himself.

Clearing my throat, I raised an eyebrow at the 'coffee' in the mug I held. "I stand corrected."

"You'll get used to it," John assured me, taking a drink of his own. "I've actually become addicted to it. Have to have a cup every morning."

His eyes flickered to a point over my shoulder, and I turned to see Donovan walk in, graciously taking the mug that John handed to her.

"Hope you slept well, Holmes," she said, her eyes skimming the length of my body. "It's a bit high-alert out there." She nodded with her head behind me, indicating the direction we would be travelling today – towards the mountains and the terrorists that my brother wanted out of this equation so badly.

"Stop trying to scare him, Donovan," John said, moving aside as Dimmock came in and took some of the potent coffee.

I shook my head, taking another sip. "I didn't sleep a wink," I assured her with a smirk, which only made her roll her eyes and walk from the room.

Anderson stared after her as she passed him, but he ignored her and walked towards the steaming cups of coffee.

"Could you take one up to Greg?" John asked, leaning back against the counter and crossing his legs.

"Sure. Should he come down?" Anderson asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back again.

John nodded wordlessly, and Anderson left the room.

With a long, withering sigh, John set his mug down for a moment and ran both of his hands down his face. He looked years older for a handful of seconds, age lines creasing around his eyes. "Wonder when the boys dropped off the Vector," he muttered, wisely dropping any subject revolving around Donovan.

"An hour ago," I said, tipping back my mug and forcing down a sip of the abnormally strong liquid. I shrugged at John's blankly curious expression. "I already told you; I didn't sleep last night."

Dimmock chuckled to my left, cupping his coffee with both hands. "Couldn't get comfortable? 'Cause it's not going to get any better out there."

I blew a small puff of air through my nose and rolled my eyes, leaning my hips against the counter. Folding my arms over my chest, I assessed the Staff Sergeant quickly, taking in his ragged morning appearance. "I never sleep while I'm on a case. Nor do I eat."

John stared at me in mild horror, the doctor part of his persona kicking in. "Why on earth not?" he demanded, his voice clearly implying that I was two or three shades of crazy.

Shrugging, I shifted my weight to my right foot, propping my left on the counter behind me. "Sleep is distracting and takes time away from the case. And digestion slows me down. So I do neither. What?" I asked, wishing he would stop looking at me like that.

As if sensing my thoughts, he dropped his gaze, shuffling his feet. "Sorry. It's just… that's not healthy."

I scoffed, waving a dismissive hand at him as I picked up my mug again, drinking faster now that the thick liquid had cooled.

Dimmock snorted. "Don't mind him, Mr Holmes. He likes to take care of people," the younger man explained, setting his empty mug down. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. "I'm going to go clean up. Want me to drag Anderson along with me?"

John gave a curt nod and a small "please," and the soldier left.

It was just John and me in the kitchen again, the silence a palpable thing between us. I wanted to fill the silence, to – strangely enough – apologise for not sleeping last night, but that felt like a betrayal to myself and to whom I had always been. So I said nothing, continuing to drink my coffee, and John did the same.

"Look," the Captain finally sighed, after I had set my mug down and was prepared to leave the room, "it's none of my business what you do with your body –"

The hand gesture he waved at me and his words sent a chill up my spine, one that I was not entirely sure I understood. I had only just met this man, surely I was not attracted to him.

"– but, while you're in my care and we're in the desert hunting down terrorists, you're eating. Sleep I can't and won't enforce, because, honestly, if you push yourself far enough, you'll pass out on your own for at least a couple of hours." He scrubbed his hand across his jaw, pushing away from the counter and tipping back the last dregs of his coffee. "But I can and will make you eat. Just sitting around out here, dressed up in your gear, will make you burn calories, and I'm not having you faint on me."

He walked forward until he was merely a pace away, staring up at me with his jaw set. "And if you fight me on this, I will ship your sorry arse back to London."

I narrowed my eyes on John, knowing immediately that he was not lying and wondering why my safety was more important to him than potentially catching a terrorist.

"Why?" I asked, needing to know.

All of the tension seemed to melt away from the soldier before me, leaving him looking the proper age and at least a little happier. He lowered his head, shaking it in what seemed to be disbelief. "Deduce it for yourself, Sherlock," he told me before walking from the room.

I stared after him until he disappeared. Giving an annoyed and highly frustrated sound, I ruffled both of my hands through my hair, wishing the action would dust away the loose and distracting thoughts that were rattling around in my mind.

"Planning on standing around all day?"

Peeking an eye open, I followed Lestrade as he came into the room to fill up his coffee mug. Aside from John, he looked the most alert of the soldiers. His salt-and-pepper hair was windblown, but not messy, and there was a subtle windburn on his cheeks.

"Not at all. Just thinking," I replied, dropping my hands from my hair with a long breath. "Unsuccessfully."

Lestrade brought his now full mug up to his lip and took a sip. "Well, since you're not having luck with that, perhaps you should go change," he suggested, gesturing behind me with his mug. "Won't be long 'til we're leaving, so you best be ready. Change your trousers into the camo ones, but leave your shirt alone. Transfer everything you had in your pockets into your camo trousers, double-check your pack for your rations, things like that."

I nodded, internally thankful for the advice the older man was giving me. Without a word, I departed from the room, taking the quickest route back to my cot. I quickly changed trousers, finding the camouflage much more form-fitting. They were by no rights skin tight, but it was a different movement, and one that I was not entirely sure I was comfortable with.

As I turned to sit down so that I could pull my boots back on, I caught sight of a figure in the doorway, frozen just this side of it.

John cleared his throat, ducking his head and stepping further into the room. "Bit different fit, aren't they?" he asked, taking a seat on the edge of his cot and pulling out a camouflage rucksack.

I noticed he was in his camouflage trousers as well.

"A bit different, yeah," I conceded, tugging on my boots and lacing them up. "Not too bad though." Taking John's lead, I studiously avoided to mention that he had most likely been staring at me, and I refused to ask how long he had been standing there.

John nodded again, pulling a tan t-shirt from the depths of his rucksack, followed by the button-up camouflage top. Wordlessly, and without glancing at me, he tugged the white t-shirt off of his shoulders, trading it quickly for the tight tan cotton.

I allowed myself only a glance, but that was really all I needed to feed my imagination with highly unwanted images. All of his skin was tan, or at least more tan than mine. Obviously, the darker skin was concentrated on his hands, face, and neck due to sun exposure, but he was by no means pale.

Muscle. Yes, obvious and quite prominent. He was not young anymore, but he had not let himself go like most near-forty-year-olds had. He took care of his body so that he could take care of his team.

There had been a black mark on his right side, just under his ribcage. Thinking back on it, I could quite confidently claim it as a tattoo, though what of, I was not sure. Writing, most definitely; not a design. Too fine, too small –

"Got everything?" John, on his feet now, asked. He had his rucksack on his back, his camouflage shirt, Osprey vest, and Browning holster in his hands.

I stood quickly, grabbing the pack and tossing it over my shoulder, holding the holster in my hand. I nodded briskly, any emotion wiped from my features. "Everything's in there."

John's eyes flickered between mine, and I took a moment to notice that he had shaved – razor, not electric.

"Come on outside with me," he offered, gesturing with a sideways nod of his head towards the door. "I'll show you how to run a security check on the Vector. Just… just in case you might have to."

I narrowed my eyes at the hesitancy in his voice, but I followed him from the room and then the house.

The muted light of five in the morning lit up the side of the buildings and cast the spaces between them into deep blue shadow. The sun was not quite visible yet, and only the colour of the light – white, not orange – gave clearly away that it was a morning.

The street was empty as we crossed it, the only sounds of life coming from at least the other side of the alleyway, if not farther off. It was odd, after coming off of a jet from London, to look around and see buildings but no people.

John pulled open the dropdown door in the far rear of the large vehicle that had been swapped for the Land Rover last night. Inside was a converted cargo area, seats now lining the sides instead of supplies.

A quick glance around gave me a good idea how long they were expecting to be out here. Two tanks of gas were stuffed into the far corner. Two boxes of rations and five boxes of bottled water stacked up together against the opposite wall. A small container of ammunition was stuffed underneath one of the seats.

With the grace of someone twenty years younger than him, John jumped up into the Vector, holding his hand down to me. "Pass me up your things."

I rolled my eyes, jumping up alongside of him. "I'm perfectly capable," I replied, setting my pack and holster down on one of the seats.

John released an insufferable sigh, one that made me smirk, before mirroring my efforts. "Alright then, come on if you're so capable. Help me out with the check." He jumped down to the ground, and I followed without complaint.

John, after leading me around to the side of the vehicle, dropped down to the ground and crawled under the belly of the Vector, rolling over onto his back. "Going to join me?" he asked, his voice muffled by the layers of metal between us.

"You're checking for bombs and compromises in the gas, oil, and brake lines. I think you have it covered," I replied, crossing my arms loosely over my chest and leaning my shoulder against the side of the vehicle.

"Alright, you show-off. Make me do all the work, then." The words out of context sounded harsh and judgmental, but John was chuckling, and the pleasant noise made me smile.

A few moments of silence passed before John spoke up again, shuffling a few inches over to the right, closer to the fuel lines. "So, who's waiting for you to return home in one piece? Girlfriend?"

I raised my eyebrow, letting the shock of that question flit across my features. I laughed at the ridiculousness of the notion, and John must have heard because he made a small huff.

"Alright, fine. No girlfriend. Boyfriend, then?"

_Persistent._

"No, John, that's not…" I kicked my toe at the ground at the frustration of not being able to find the right words. "I've got no one waiting for me except my landlady."

The sounds that accompanied John fiddling around with the workings of the vehicle came to a halt at the same time the small amount of movement I had been watching in John's legs did. "What, no friends? Family? Nothing?"

I snorted rather inelegantly. "I don't have friends. In case it's slipped your notice, I don't have the most personable of personalities."

There was a conceding grunt from under the vehicle.

"As for my family… well, Mycroft's the only one who even knows I'm over here, and he's the one who sent me to this godforsaken desert, so I doubt he's eagerly awaiting my return. Just my pinpointing these terrorists and cleaning up messes he refuses to get involved in."

John slipped out from under the Vector, his hand holding on to the running board as he gazed up at me. "So you have no one?"

I did not need the pity in his eyes, so I turned away, heading for the front of the supply truck and popping open the hood. "I told you, I've got my landlady. She's more like a mother to me than anything, so that's enough for me."

John slid up beside me, pulling himself up onto the wing and leaning half into the engine of the vehicle. "Well, you know I've got a sister," he started, tinkering around in the rear of the chasse. "She hasn't got the time to miss me, which is why I never go visit her. My mum died when I was seventeen. My dad and I tried to do right by Harry, but she had already started drinking by then and that only made her worse."

I remained silent, already able to see where this was going.

"I haven't talked to her since… God, since I left, but I write her a letter every so often. She never writes back – too drunk to, I imagine."

"And your father?" I asked quietly, though I could already guess. I hated to admit to myself that I enjoyed listening to John talk, no matter what he was talking about.

John cleared his throat, leaning back a little and looking at his hands. "He –"

"Captain, we're ready when you are."

I flicked my gaze sideways, taking in the other four soldiers – all dressed the same as John and myself with packs over their shoulders – as they trooped closer to the vehicle. Donovan and Anderson split off from Dimmock and Lestrade, walking towards the front of the vehicle.

John jumped down and closed the hood, nudging me in the side and walking away. I followed, but not before meeting Donovan's gaze as she pulled herself up into the driver's seat. Her eyes narrowed when they met mine, and I returned the gesture.

"Freak," she muttered.

My eyes flashed at the comment, but before I could reply, her door had been slammed shut.

"Sherlock."

I turned around to see John standing near the rear of the truck, looking at me with his head tilted to the side. I quickly wiped all emotion from my face, walking towards him with purpose in my step.

He put a hand on my shoulder before I could pass, and I resisted the strong urge to defend myself and shrug it off. "Everything alright?" he asked quietly.

I nodded curtly. "Of course."

I pulled myself up into the cargo hold-turned passenger area before John could stop me again and delay our departure even further. Lestrade smiled kindly at me and gestured to the seat beside him, which I took as gracefully as I thought was possible. The slam of the door told me that John had finally joined us, and he called up for Donovan to get going.

I watched, intrigued, as the Captain moved towards the front of the modified cargo area, crouching down on the balls of his feet, his hand placed on the seat to steady himself as he reached underneath it.

"May as well hand him the file, Lestrade," John instructed, hauling out a large green box by its handle.

"Where is it, sir?"

"My pack, front pocket." He unclipped four clasps along the front of the container, pushing open the lid to reveal the device underneath.

_Oh_.

I nodded minutely to myself as my thoughts were confirmed.

Lestrade stood from his seat, walking on unsteady feet to the opposite side of the vehicle. The Vector gave a sudden jerk sideways, toppling Lestrade into the seats and causing John to lose his balance and fall on his hip.

"Dammit, Sally!" Lestrade yelled, pushing himself back to his feet as the vehicle straightened out. "I'm getting too old for your reckless driving."

"No one ever said you couldn't drive, Greg," was the answering call, to which the Warrant Officer smirked.

"That's enough out of both of you," John chided, flipping switches on the VHF radio in the box before him.

Lestrade chuckled, fishing a manila envelope out of John's rucksack, and made his way back over to me. "Here," he said, handing the envelope off to me, "this is everything we know about them."

I tipped the contents of the envelope out into my hand, staring down at the three pieces of paper. "This is it? You have nothing else?"

Dejectedly, Lestrade shook his head.

On the other side of the hold, John murmured something into the radio's speaker about us departing.

_'Copy that. Operation Detox underway.'_

I narrowed my eyes at the scratchy reply, but I did not have time to analyse it completely before Lestrade was addressing me again.

"They started three months ago, hitting the outer limits of the city, always leaving at least one dead body in their wake. Mutilated the corpses in some way. We found three people skinned, five burned, and most looked like they had undergone torture. After a week, they started leaving a calling card."

He gestured at the papers in my hands and I complied by flipping through them. The last page contained three photographs, none of the highest quality. He tapped the first one, and his gaze as he stared at it was bitter.

I studied the photo closer, taking in the lines of the graffiti to see if I could glean anything from it about its creator. But without being there in person, there was nothing much to be told except the basics.

"They're calling themselves 'Spyder,' which is leading us to believe that they're not in association with al-Qaeda."

"It is not wise to make assumptions, Warrant Officer," I chastised, my voice a mere murmur as I ruffled back through the other two pieces of paper, my eyes skimming the text. "Though in this case, you would be correct.

"The design of this," I gestured at the picture of the graffiti, "suggests that the person who painted it was following a pattern. I'm assuming all of the others looked exactly like this one and that's why there's only the one photo?"

"Yeah," Dimmock spoke up for the first time since we had climbed into the vehicle, "we got so used to seeing them that eventually they just faded into the background."

I nodded, though internally I was rolling my eyes at their lack of observation. "Then he was definitely following a pattern. And I would assume that if I had photos of the others, they would get less and less sloppy as they progressed."

"He?" John asked, rising from the floor and taking his seat.

I let out a short sigh. "Yes, he. Obvious in the mistakes. A woman who was following a pattern would have flared up into points after each line," I demonstrated an arching gesture with my hand, "but a man would stop bluntly, often resulting in the loss of a point, as you can see here, here, and here.

"And when you put that together with the fact that they're a terrorist group, one can only conclude that female involvement is minimal, if not completely non-existent."

There was a shared look between Lestrade and Dimmock, the latter of whom then raised his eyebrows at John, who merely shrugged.

I smirked.

"Well, that was… different," Lestrade offered. He cleared his throat and pointed at the last two photographs. "Anyway, these are the leaders. At least, that's what we've gleaned from our sources."

"Reliable sources?" I asked as I studied the profiles of the two men.

One was older, crew cut hair, stubble, flat green eyes. From what I could see of his shoulders in the picture, they were broad and well-built. There was a thick scar on his neck that he was quite obviously proud of.

The other picture was from far away and pixilated. He was approximately 5'8" tall, perhaps just a bit taller, dark hair – could be either brown or black, impossible to tell from this photo – and he was dressed in a suit.

I narrowed my eyes.

_A suit in the desert. _

"They're the sources that gave us the locations."

I glanced up at John, implications of torture in his voice. "Reliable enough, then."

Lestrade cleared his throat. "Sorry about the quality of the last; we can't get any closer to him. The first guy was on record, so we had his mug shot."

"Probably a good thing," I told him, shuffling the papers back into the envelope. "Tell me," I turned to John, but my question was for all of them, "which of these two men scares you the most? Which one would you least like to meet in an alleyway?"

All three, after looking uncomfortable, answered with the first man.

"Wrong."

I shook my head slowly, handing the enveloped back over to John.

"He's muscle, yeah. Good with a gun and more than likely a knife as well. A killer. Sneak up behind you and snap your neck. When he's alone, that is.

"The other man, he's, well, different. The suit alone told me legions about him. Doesn't like to get his hands dirty, doesn't go out in the field, and he commands it all. The suit gives him a sense of power, a physical representation that is really not needed. He's creative and crafty, and he would torture you for days before slitting your throat and leaving you to drown in your own blood."

Silence hung over the four of us as we transitioned from the small roads and alleyways to the highway – the increase in speed and the sound the tires made against the asphalt giving it away.

"Right. So, basically what you're saying," Dimmock leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees, "is to always have our guns out and loaded?"

"And preferably walk in teams of two or more."

"Even if we have to go take a piss?"

"A very distasteful choice of words, but yes, even then."

"Well, none of you are coming with me when I have to go to the loo," Donovan cast over her shoulder. "Sorry, boys."

I rolled my eyes, shifting back on my seat and resting my head against the side of the hold and slipping my eyelids closed.

"That night of no sleep catching up with you?" John's voice drifted over to me, a hint of 'I told you so' in his tone.

"Not at all," I answered, opening my eyes to pin him with a look. "I'm thinking. And it's easier to think if I'm not being overloaded by visual information." When he didn't respond, I closed my eyes again and tried to block out the meaningless chatter of the people around me.

The task was easier said than done, but once I was firmly blocked into my mind, I was able to sink through a fair amount of information. I threw out all of my feelings and emotions since arriving in Afghanistan – the heat, the emptiness, the expectations – except for those involving Captain John Watson. Those I stored in a locked box in the far corner of my consciousness.

I kept track of our travels, marking out in my mind what roads we were taking to get to the location. We banked off of the highway after roughly twenty-five kilometres – it was hard to gauge distance if I didn't have a definite speed to go off of – and started heading almost due north. The goings were slower now, but that was preferable seeing as the road was not in the best condition – cracked tar in some spots and gravel in others. Uncomfortable to say the least.

_'Base to Fusiliers.'_

I pulled myself out of my mind, my eyelids parting in time to see John lower himself to the floor and pick up the transmitting end of the radio.

"This is Captain Watson, go ahead."

_'Confirmed three heat signatures. Proceed with caution.'_

"Understood. Thanks for the heads up."

John climbed back into his seat, and, at my raised eyebrows, gave a long sigh. "Last week we sent a drone out to scan the area and it picked up on heat signatures in the house. Since we're not _complete_ idiots, we sent it out again this morning."

I nodded in acknowledgement, returning the smirk he threw at me.

"Anderson! How far out are we?" John called up front, twisting in his seat to direct his voice better.

"Um," the Lance Corporal seemed to be shuffling around, either looking at a map or looking _for_ a map. "Five kilometres, sir."

"Donovan, pull over when we're two kilometres out and hide this beast among some rocks if you can."

"Sir?"

"Problem?"

"We're just going to leave it unguarded, Captain?"

John smirked, standing up and zipping open his rucksack, pulling out his camouflage shirt. He gestured for the rest of us to do the same, and we all instantly stood up to follow his lead.

"Unless you would like to alert the three people inside of the house that we're coming?"

Donovan made a small irritated noise in the back of her throat that carried back to my ears. "No, sir."

John did not comment further, shrugging the camouflage over his shoulders and buttoning it up above the collar of his t-shirt. The Osprey bulletproof vest followed, which Dimmock helped him with, and John in turn helped the Staff Sergeant.

I eyed the white patch with the red cross on John's sleeve, the one that claimed him as a doctor.

"Isn't that a safety issue?" I asked as I finished buttoning my own shirt, nodding at the white fabric that stood out in stark contrast to the desert colors of the rest of his clothes.

John shook his head, fixing his PRR to his ear and clipping the radio portion of it to the front of his vest. "It's a calculated risk." When his eyes met mine, I could see that he thought it was well worth it.

I slipped on the Osprey body armour, Lestrade stepping forward and doing up the straps, showing me how to do it so that I could return the favour to him.

By the time Donovan had the Vector parked with the engine shut off, we were all ready.

"Alright, holsters on," John instructed, casting his glance at Donovan and Anderson as they climbed into the back to pull on their gear.

"We're going to walk there in two lines, and your line is your group. If we get under fire, you stay with your group, don't branch off with the others, got it?" John instructed as we buckled on our holsters.

Everyone nodded.

"I'll be leading one line. Holmes and Dimmock, you're with me. Lestrade, you take Anderson and Donovan.

"Keep your radios all tuned to channel Alpha Bravo One. Stay calm, stay quiet. The sun is not working in our favour this morning if they're hiding in the mountains."

He paused to look around at us, his eyes pausing on me with a question in their depths.

I blinked slowly, trying to convey my answer to him.

"What's my first rule of engagement?" John asked suddenly, sweeping his gaze around at his team.

"Only dead men don't back down," they all chorused.

I raised my eyebrow, intrigued that John had taught them all that line. It was rather fitting for an infantry group, I had to admit.

Not so much so for John.

"Alright then, let's go."


	4. Chapter 4

The air was different out here compared to the city of Kabul – even the edge of it.

Around the buildings in the early morning, the cold from the night still hovered, encased me like a tomb that had not been opened in years. But out here, just shy of the mountain's shadow, with the sun pounding down onto heavy camouflage and body armour, I felt like I was being roasted.

Stepping outside had been like hitting a physical wall, all of the air in my lungs struggling to keep up with the extreme temperature difference between the inside of the Vector and the desert world I had been dumped into.

"Alright there, Mr Holmes?"

I glanced up at Dimmock, who was running through a check on his L85A2 assault rifle, same as the others. "Yes, of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

The younger soldier shrugged, pinning me with dark eyes looking up under thin lashes.

"First mission and all…" he trailed off, shrugging again and sliding the safety off on the rifle. "Most people get nervous, anxious… some get excited."

I could tell easily that he disliked and distrusted people who were eager for gun use, for violence. I also knew that around eighty percent of the British military was made up of trigger happy young men.

I snorted softly, my peripheral vision picking up on John looking over at me, still running a check on his L129A1 DMR. "Well, Staff Sergeant, I'm not the Commonwealth."

"Okay, ladies," John called our attention, his voice coming through the radio and through the open air simultaneously. The delay was a bit disorientating.

"Stay in your groups. I'm going to take the way nearest to the mountain, so, Lestrade, you have a better shooting angle. I want you lot fifteen metres away and a few steps behind us. You two," John turned to point at Dimmock and me, "the walking distance between the three of us is five feet. Don't break it."

I nodded briskly, saw Dimmock do the same.

"Alright then." John nodded at all of us before he jerked his head sideways and started walking. His DMR was raised to shoulder level, turning with him as he scanned our surroundings, always in constant, straight-backed motion.

I had the innate urge to duck down, to walk in a crouch. Just the knowledge that we were being watched – and the statistical likelihood of that fact – had me on edge. I reached down to my thigh, un-holstering my SIG and holding it against my leg, pointed at the ground by my feet. It was reassurance – the knowledge that, if I needed to, I would be able to defend myself.

Even if I knew that a nine millimetre handgun was no match for a fifty calibre sniper rifle.

The mountain was a mass of rock – an odd colour between blue and orange in the shadow it cast – off on my right, rising up to a jagged edge. A poet would have said it was reaching for the sun. I was never much of a poet; no time for emotions, and what was a poem if not a written form of the author's emotions.

_You play the violin_.

_Not the same._

I shook myself mentally, knowing this was not the time to get lost in my thoughts. A quick glance to my left showed Lestrade leading Donovan and Anderson, the latter cluttered much too close to the former.

_Idiot._ He was going to get them killed. He was going to get us all killed.

I made a mental note to ask John why he hadn't traded the incompetent young man off yet. Another mental note was made to question the doctor about his team placement.

"How's everyone doing?"

John's voice. I could not hear him through the air this time; the wind had come up, seemingly out of nowhere, in a sudden gust that blew stray pieces of sand into my eyes.

Something bumped my bicep, and I looked down to see Dimmock's hand, a pair of sunglasses in them. Glancing up at him, I saw him wearing a pair of wrap-arounds. I took the sunglasses, nodding my thanks before twisting back around.

"Just fine, Captain," Lestrade replied, his voice scratchy. Distance, apparently, was not beneficial to the PRRs.

Another mental note to ask what their range was.

"Have you seen anything?" John sent back.

There was a pause before we were granted a reply. "Nothing yet, sir. Hoping that it stays that way."

"Copy that, Warrant Officer."

There was not a signal from John or a click on the radio that officially ended the conversation, but it was evident that any other conversation was strictly forbidden.

"How close?" I asked, never having been one to follow the rules.

"Donovan?" John questioned.

There was a sigh, followed by, "Little less than a kilometre, sir."

John looked over his shoulder at me, and I saw his eyebrows rise from behind his wrap-arounds. I nodded, smirking when he had turned around.

There was a hill just ahead, nearer the mountain than we were currently. John started angling that way, and I followed, noticing Lestrade and his team beginning to slowly merge our way.

The sand thickened around the base of the incline, making movement go from difficult to the likes of attempting to walk through molasses. I did not voice my difficulties, knowing Donovan was closer, almost beside us, and that she would jeer. I was not sure I could handle another degrading comment today.

Dimmock caught up to me as we made our way up what was practically a sand dune, though he slowed his pace once he was beside me. I rolled my eyes, not needing his kindness, and forced my legs to move faster, though my muscles were burning at that point.

There was a grunt from the soldier beside me as his leg slid out from under him. Reflexively, I reached out with my hand, catching his elbow and hauling him back up.

He clapped me on the back, panting. "Thanks, mate."

I smiled, nodding at the others who were ahead of us, nearly at the top of the hill. "We should catch up."

"Oi! Dimmock, Holmes, you two done flirting down there or should we postpone this another five minutes for you?"

Dimmock and I both chuckled at John's voice in our radios, though I was caught by the slightly different tone he had said it in. Maybe it was the wind, maybe it was because he was breathing hard, perhaps it was because I was delusional with "runner's high," but I could have sworn that was… jealousy?

No, I was definitely delusional.

The Staff Sergeant and I crested the hill together, dropping down onto our stomachs like the rest of the team. John was looking through binoculars, though he quickly handed them off to Lestrade. "You seeing what I'm seeing?"

Lestrade took his time looking through the lenses, adjusting the power and the clarity. "Don't see a damned thing," he said, passing the binoculars back to John, who only handed them to me.

I raised my eyebrows, but John just sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes, facing forward again. Narrowing my eyes at him, I raised the binoculars, peering through them at the mud brick, one story house. It was tucked into a small divot in the mountainside, only accessible from where we were, protected on the other three sides. I focused the powerful zoom of the binoculars on the windows, trying to pick up on any movement inside.

There.

"Movement," I said, handing the binoculars back to John, who immediately put them up to his eyes. "Far right window. Curtain fluttering."

John stared for a long time, the hilltop going silent as he observed. "I saw it," he finally said, nodding and handing the binoculars back over to Lestrade.

"Oh, for the love of –" I moved to my knees, crawling past John and Dimmock and slowly making my way down the sandy hill.

"Holmes!"

There was suddenly a tug and then a pull on the back of the Osprey vest, and I spun around to see John staring at me with wide eyes, both fear and anger in their depths. "The bloody hell do you think you're doing?"

I shrugged off John's hold, backing up a little farther and lifting my chin. "I'm going to do what I was sent here to do while you all waste valuable time."

"You're going to get yourself killed," John snapped, sliding down on his hip to my level. "It's my job to protect you, so you're going to listen to me."

"No," I told him firmly, pushing to my feet and holding my arms out to my sides. "There's no one here. Cliffs are empty. Logical positions for hiding behind rocks for an ambush are minimal and inadequate. And the house is empty."

John stared at me solidly, the confusion written quite plainly on his face. "But you just said…"

"I said there was _movement_," I replied, rolling my eyes. "Christ, you all need to open your eyes and ears. _Observe_." I turned and walked away, my SIG held firmly in my palm.

"Observe _what_?" John asked, catching up to me with the rest of the team on his heels, their rifles raised at a threat that was not there.

"Tire tracks," I pointed, "that are hours old. Boot prints that got out of a vehicle, went to the house, and returned. All pairs returned, might I mention. There are only four good sniper posts, as Donovan should have pointed out right away, seeing as she is your typical sniper when you need one."

That comment earned me a glare, but I barrelled on ahead, walking forward with purpose.

"The only places for a ground strike are there, there, and there. Possibly there, but doubtful." I made sure to gesture forcefully at each spot, lessening the odds of having to repeat myself.

"But what about –"

"The building, yes. The heat signatures." I shifted my hold on the gun, pushing my shoulders back as we closed in on the house. "I have my theory about that as well. Just need to enter the house to prove it."

My peripheral vision picked up on the other four infantry soldiers fanned out around us, Lestrade keeping a bit closer. Part of me was relieved that they did not need to be told what their jobs were – even Anderson seemed to have at least some clue.

John grabbed my arm, pulling me to a halt and stepping in front of me. "We'll enter the house, fine, but we're doing it my way. You're staying in the back and letting us do our jobs."

"Like _hell_ I am," I hissed, leaning down closer to John. "You lot will contaminate everything. I need to be the first, and if not the first, then the second person in there or everything will get destroyed. Unless _you_ would like to explain to my brother why I can't do my bloody job."

John lifted his chin defiantly at me, though there was a wavering _something _in the depths of his eyes that I could not quite determine. I just knew that it was not the look of a war-hardened soldier who would do anything to win.

"What do you think is inside of that building, Mr Holmes?" he asked, his voice low and soft, and I finally recognised the look in his eyes. It was fear, and it was well-placed.

I could not help my twisted smile, the smile that bespoke the beginning of a rather fun and intense game. "Bodies, Captain Watson. Bodies."

John stared at me for a few seconds, though they felt like years with the gravity of the situation around us and with the disbelief heavy in his eyes. Then he reacted, the stiff-backed, square-shouldered Captain coming out into the open. It was a wonderful transformation to witness.

"Donovan! Anderson! Circle around back; watch the windows. Check for a back door, and if you find one, stay there."

"Yes, sir."

"Dimmock!"

"Sir?" The Staff Sergeant's voice sounded a bit hesitant, as if he was suspecting some horrible job, like climbing up onto the roof or heading back to get the Vector. I wondered how many times he had been sent off to do something unpleasant just because John trusted him to do it and do it right.

"Cover our backs. Stay outside of the house at all times unless I call for you. Keep an eye on the hill."

John started to approach the house, dragging me along for the first few steps. As if I would not have been right on his heels anyway.

"Alright, Holmes. Here's how this is going to go down." John turned to look at me, speaking softly – unnecessary – as we stood just outside of the door. "I'm entering first and you're going to be on my heels, Lestrade coming in behind you. We're going to clear the house and then let you get to work. And as soon as you're done, no matter what is behind that door, we're rendezvousing back at the Vector." He paused for a half second before one last, "Everyone got that?"

A collective "yes, sir" ran through my PRR, one that I was not a part of saying.

John gave me a hard look, and, had I been a lesser man, I most likely would have cowered. Instead, I arched an eyebrow, which earned me a heavy sigh and rolled eyes.

Everything suddenly grew quiet, the sort of quiet that feels like a weight – a palpable thing that suffocates anyone it touches. There was no static through the radios, no whisper of the wind through the air. The world narrowed down to just what my eyes could see, and the blood rushing through my veins.

John looked over his shoulder at me one last time, his eyes shining perhaps a little brighter with a mix of excitement and apprehension. Then he turned to Lestrade, counted to three, and kicked down the door.

The silence shattered with the splintering of the wood.

I was right on John's heels as we converged into the building, and there was so _much_ noise. Breathing. Boot scrapes on the floor. Wind whistling through the cracked windows. Hissing and popping of fire.

I broke formation, sidestepping John into another room.

"_Sherlock_," he snapped at me, and, even in a whisper, his voice made my steps falter.

But I did not stop. I could not stop. There was something that had to be discovered, had to be seen. A story that had to be told. Something had happened here, was actually _still_ happening here.

My gun was in my hands in a teacup hold and the safety was off, but it was down by my thigh, pointed at the ground. I was not going to need it. I had zero intentions of discharging any bullets today. There was no one to shoot at in this house. Well… no one alive, anyway.

There was a black tarpaulin blocking a doorway, and I threw it back without hesitation, the heat of a fire and the smell of burning flesh hitting me with a force solid enough to knock the wind from me and make me want to gasp for breath. Thankfully, I knew better. I holstered my weapon and covered my nose and mouth with the crook of my arm, stepping farther into the room to peer closer at the bodies – three of them, two male, one female, all under the age of twenty.

"Sherlock, what the f– Oh, bloody hell!" John gagged, wisely turning from the room as he retched around the corner. It did not sound like anything actually came up, though, which was good.

I slowly lowered my arm, having acclimatised to the smell now – as much as a person could, at least. "As a doctor, I thought you would be used to the smell of dead bodies. Even if they happen to be burning," I commented, turning around to look at the doorway for a moment before returning to the bodies, slightly annoyed that I could not closely examine them because of the fire.

I saw John turn around out of the corner of my eye, noticed the rag tied over his nose and mouth, saw the second rag he was waving at me and dismissed it.

With an irritated and obviously slightly aggravated sigh, John reached up to clear his PRR for a moment. "Lestrade, come in and clear the rest of the house, please. Everyone else, eyes and ears open. It's a bit of a shit pile in here."

I refocused on the bodies, tuning out John's presence and the addition of Lestrade's clomping footfalls. He called out "clear" every time he swept a room, something I could have told them – actually, I did tell them – before we had even entered the house.

The victims were interesting. Race was impossible, though it was not a large leap to say that they were Afghani. Probably related, though again, not a definite. No, wait. Definite family resemblance between the boys, the girl, who was the oldest, was still an uncertainty. They had been dead a few days, but they had not been burning long, only a handful of… oh…

I glanced over towards the now empty doorway, narrowing my eyes as if I could see through the walls and to the tire tracks in the dirt outside.

How predictably unpredictable.

_Thank you for this, Mycroft_.

"We all good in here?" Lestrade asked, sticking his head in the door and blocking my field of vision, which was, really, only mud brick walls anyway. It was mostly my focus that he had taken away.

Shaking myself mentally, I slowly straightened, turning on the balls of my feet so that I was facing the victims. I gestured Lestrade inside, recognising that John was not in the room any longer.

Part of my mind nagged at me, wondering where he had gone, demanding that I search for him. The other part said to hell with him. I wisely ignored both for now.

"You were raised around New Scotland Yard, yes?" I asked, not bothering explaining how I had come to the deduction. More an observation, really. Letter from his uncle, the Chief Superintendent at NSY at this very moment, keeping this aging soldier updated with all that was going on, illegally informing him of murders and suspects.

Lestrade looked over at me, his eyebrows arched and shoulders straight, but did not argue it.

I gestured towards the three bodies, taking a step forward as I did so. "What's wrong with this picture, Lestrade?" I asked, sidestepping and again finding myself wishing for my lengthily Belstaff.

"You telling me there's something right with it?" he gruffed, shifting his weight around a little, keeping his eyes focused mostly on me and not the young people on the hard-packed dirt floor.

I did not dignify his question with an answer. "Look at how they're placed. They weren't dragged in here, because there aren't any marks on the floor to indicate it," I pointed quickly and then moved on. "There's no blood and, from what I can tell, no knife or bullet wounds. So how did they get here? Why are they lying on the floor like that?"

Lestrade shrugged, scratching at the corner of his chapped mouth with the tip of a gloved thumb. "Yuh got me there. Dropped 'em like flour sacks?"

"Very good, Lestrade. Wrong, of course, but good," I said, a slight smile gracing my lips. I wondered absently if John would have accumulated the correct answer.

_Irrelevant_.

"They were killed here while unconscious. Most likely drugged. Carried in, laid down, and suffocated. Not quick, but efficient."

"Why the fires?" the Warrant Officer asked, his hands resting loosely on his gun.

I looked over at him as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "To fool the drone, of course. To bring us out here and off-course. To make us waste a day of travel."

Lestrade shook his head, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder. "If you're done, John wants us outside. There's nothing else here, so he's going to call in a backup team to clear this place and we're going to get going to the second site." He turned to leave, either figuring I would follow or knowing I would. Either way, it was a pretty risky business, turning away from me in a room with dead bodies.

I followed.

Stepping out of the building was no more pleasant than stepping out of the Vector had been earlier in the day. Perhaps it was a _little_ cooler, but the desert did not seem to want to give up her heat, and the mountain's shadow had long since passed to the other side of the mass of rock.

John and company, minus Lestrade and me, had gathered in a basic attempt at a circle about six metres off of the mud brick house. By the way John was gesturing, I could tell he was either giving instructions or directions. As we neared and I caught a few words, I realised that it was the former.

I blinked a couple of times, and then I also realised that they were all in relaxed positions, hands resting across lax assault rifles.

I was about to bring something up about it – about the fact that just because no one was here _now_ did not mean that someone could not arrive _later_ – when John turned to see us approaching. His expression went from grim to gaunt and slightly stormy.

"What the _hell_ was that?" he asked, pacing up to us – to me, more accurately, because Lestrade had moved off and John was directly in front of me.

I narrowed my eyes, rising to my full height and squaring my shoulders, unsure of exactly where I stood with this argument. "To which _'that'_ are you referring?" I asked, my voice smooth and cold as ice.

For only 5'6", John was damn intimidating when he wanted to be. The look he gave me was withering and made me want to go crawl in a hole and lick my metaphorical wounds – though I did not even know what those were at this point.

"You broke pattern! You charged into a room, practically unarmed, unexpectedly, and past a black tarpaulin, no less!" he yelled, the disappointment highly evident in his voice.

I opened my mouth to argue, but he shot me down.

"Do you have a death wish, Mr Holmes?"

"No," I replied as calmly as possible, once John had taken a breath. "I was doing my job, Captain."

"And you weren't allowing me to do mine!" he snapped back.

My eyes narrowed. "I was doing what any of your men would have done. I was clearing the house. I was _not_ going to follow in your shadow as you took your time walking around, checking for enemies that weren't there!" There, an edge rose in my voice now.

"You passed three rooms that hadn't been checked yet. You not only broke pattern, you broke protocol, and you endangered yourself and my team."

"There was no threat!" I yelled.

"There fucking could have been!" John's tone was just as angry as mine, and just as loud.

Our voices were still bouncing vaguely off the walls of the mountain, the sound muffling what would have otherwise been a deafening silence. John was still staring hard at me, his breathing a little heavy. My gaze was wavering, unable to keep eye contact too long.

Movement at the top of my field of vision caught my attention, and I quickly looked up, noticing the dark shape nestled amongst the red rocks. I narrowed my eyes, catching the glint of sunlight off of something – gun barrel, most likely.

I studied the angle to determine the trajectory – my heart rate was racing much too fast – and ended up throwing a look over my shoulder, staring hard at the house.

_House. Why? Why is he shooting at the house? Nothing to hit, just brick and the roof._

The answer knocked into me like a train.

"Sherlock?" The anger that had been in John's voice had faded into worry. Enough worry for him to push formalities aside.

"Bomb," I whispered, and then louder, my voice picking up urgency, "Bomb. There's a bomb in the house. Everyone get away from it! Find cover!"

The words had not much sooner left my lips than a gunshot rang out, the sharp sound rapidly swallowed by a shockwave and a resounding _boom_.

Arms wrapped around my waist, and I was thrown to the ground, a body pressing half on top of me.

Facing away from the house, I could not see anything, but, Christ, the _noise_. Instinct had me wrapping my hands above my head and tucking my knees up. Something heavy landed on my hip, and I winced, knowing that it would bruise later.

I was not sure how many seconds – minutes? – passed before the body covering me pulled away, and a hand hit my forearm. I uncurled myself, reaching out for the hand and letting myself be pulled up.

I turned away from John, immediately studying the ridge where the shooter had been. But it was too late; he was gone.

"Well, shit," Dimmock commented, and I glanced over at him, finding him staring at the crumpled building with his hands on his hips.

Debris was scattered on the ground. Bricks, tiles, shards of glass, some pieces reaching much farther than where we had all been taking cover.

Donovan gave a low whistle. "Bet that bomb was in one of the rooms Holmes didn't check," she commented, walking off and kicking at a loose rock.

"Donovan, I checked all of the rooms in that house," Lestrade said, and I was thankful to have him at my back.

Gratitude was not a feeling I was much accustomed to having.

The female Sergeant did not reply, just walked off farther from the group.

Rolling his eyes, John nodded at Anderson and sent him off after her. The inexperienced soldier was shaking from shock, but at least he had not started screaming or gone into a panic attack yet. So there was some hope for him, at least.

"What now, Captain?" Lestrade asked, voicing the question ringing through all of our minds – though there was really only one logical thing to do.

John sighed. "Let's rendezvous back at the Vector and then we can –" John's voice cut as a loud, high-pitched static sound filled the air.

I clapped my hands over my ears, pinching my eyes shut as the noise only grew louder.

_Oh._

Reacting nearly before the thought hit me, I yanked the PRR painfully from my ear, wincing a little, but at least the ringing was gone. I opened my eyes to see that the others had come to the same conclusion I had, if a bit slower.

"The bloody hell was that?" Donovan yelled, pacing back up to us and cupping her ear, which was obviously bleeding.

Strangely enough, I really could not find it in myself to care about her pain.

"Radio disturbance, obviously," I supplied, letting the earpiece of my radio dangle down in front of me. "Purposeful, no doubt."

She rolled her eyes, but John cut her off before she could say anything.

"Do you think it affected the VHF Radio back in the Vector?" he asked, looking up at me with all of our previous conversation seemingly forgotten.

I waved my hand impatiently at the obtuse question. "That's two kilometres away. Highly doubtful. Most likely impossible."

John ran a hand down what was visible of his face under his helmet and sunglasses, which was not much. He made a small, slightly disgruntled but mostly noncommittal noise and dropped his hand back to his side.

"Alright. Let's deal with this, then. Donovan, get up on that hill. I want you scanning those ridges, and shoot anything that moves. Anderson, dig around in the rubble pile. See if you can pull out parts of the bomb, and do try not to get blown up. Dimmock, help him out. Lestrade –"

"Yes, I know, Captain."

I stiffened, staring at John as he directed work that _I_ should be doing to people who were going to ruin every last bit of evidence that there was. "Captain, I –"

"Mr Holmes, you're coming with me."

I narrowed my eyes a little at him. Not five minutes ago he was making an example of me, and now he was hauling me off where I was going to be expected to cover him.

"And just where are we going?" I asked, and perhaps there was a haughty tone in my voice.

"Well, someone has to go get the Vector and contact some backup. Come on." He walked away before I could argue.

I rolled my eyes, taking off after him until our steps were matched.

We walked around the hill this time, avoiding the deep sand and sticking to the harder, gravel-laden dirt. Our boots crunching on the rocks was the only noise for a long while. John had his assault rifle lifted, and my SIG was in my hand with the safety off, but that was all. The silence became awkward, even for me, but I refused to break it.

It was not until the Vector could be seen, nestled behind a grouping of boulders, that John finally spoke.

"You know, I didn't mean what I said back there." He looked over at me, relaxing his posture a little, his shooting arm dropping down a few centimetres. "When I was yelling, I didn't actually mean it. I was just trying to prove a point to the team."

I smirked, turning off towards the mountain. "Yes, I know. It was very good acting, Captain."

"Thanks – wait, you could tell?"

"Don't worry, nothing outward gave it away. Your eyes did, though. Hard to lie to me, John." I smiled a little at him, pulling off the sunglasses Dimmock had given me earlier. We were in the shadow of the Vector now; I did not need them.

"My eyes?" John asked, taking his own off and unclipping his water flask from his belt. He took a pull from it, wiping away a small bit that dribbled down his chin, the motion taking some gathered dust off with it. "Want some?" he offered, holding the flask out to me.

Ridiculous notion. I did have my own.

I shook my head, dropping down to the ground and sliding underneath the Vector to start checking it for bombs that could have been left in our absence. Seeing none, I started examining the fuel and brake lines for leaks.

"Yes, John, your eyes," I said, picking up our conversation again. "When a person is trying to remember something, like a rehearsed conversation, they look up and to the left. You are no exception."

I slid out from under the vehicle, taking the offered hand and letting John help me to my feet.

He did not let go right away, just stared at me intently for a long moment. Finally, he shook his head, releasing me and walking around to the hood of the Vector. He took his helmet off, probably an unwise choice, but it was one that I quickly mimicked.

The air had cooled remarkably, and the slight breeze felt positively heavenly on my sweat-soaked temples.

I walked over to the front of the vehicle, leaning against the tan metal, and watched John work. Even through the Osprey Body Armour and the slightly baggy camouflage shirt, I could imagine the muscle that was there. I could easily picture the build that I had seen just that morning when John walked in and caught me changing.

"You know," John started, still diligently working away on the engine; though, I could not possibly imagine what he could be doing. "You're really quite brilliant. And what you did back at that house…" He paused for a moment, seemingly staring at his hands. "It really _was_ stupid, Sherlock. But that doesn't make it less impressive."

I looked up and met his eyes when he turned to look at me. I shrugged nonchalantly and dropped my gaze, kicking distractedly at the wing of the vehicle with the toe of my boot.

"That's what I do, John. That's my job. I run towards the bomb, towards the dead bodies, towards the danger. I take risks."

When I looked back up, I was not sure I liked the look in John's eyes.

He stepped down off of the wing, closing the distance between us with only one and a half short strides. "Risks, huh?" he asked, and he was so close that I could smell him, could see the flecks of dirt on his face, the clean part where he had wiped the water away, could see the small freckles on his nose and catalogue each brown flare in his eyes that betrayed his central heterochromia.

All of my thoughts were wiped clean when a fist smaller than mine grabbed onto the front of my vest and a pair of chapped lips crashed into mine.

I brought my hands up to cup John's face, parting my lips because I needed more. I was not disappointed, willingly backing up when John pushed me back against the front of the Vector. Fingers wound into my hair, pulling on it just right.

John slid his tongue against mine, hesitantly tasting and exploring, and I let him, cautiously returning the gesture.

When we parted, it was mutual. John's hand stayed in my hair, and mine stayed on either side of his neck, my thumbs gently running over his cheeks. I could see his thoughts running behind his eyes, could see the hesitancy and the regret coming forward.

"Don't," I whispered, leaning down to capture John's lips again, not putting much pressure there at all. "Don't regret this. I don't."

John looked like he wanted to say something, but he could not seem to find the words, so he just nodded, carding his hand through my hair. I leaned into the touch while it was there, resting our foreheads together.

"We should get back to the group," John murmured, looking up at me with wide eyes.

I nodded, though that was the last thing I wanted to do. "Alright." I kissed him once more, pleased that he returned it, and then walked around to pull myself up into the passenger seat of the Vector.


End file.
